From tech guy to performer – a year in retrospect

It’s officially been a year since I had my first real club gig at Cielo Cantina (now defunct) and I wanted to post about my experience and where I’m currently at in my journey.

I joined KCPR, if I was to guess, in 2005. KCPR is a independent college radio station at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. It taught me how to pick tracks that make sense and taught me how important it is to search for not only new, relevant music, but how to promote and support the artists that you utilize.

In 2009, I had expressed some interest in doing, what I would consider Club Mixing, and my girlfriend scrounged up some hard earned cash and bought me a controller. This influence was mostly from listening to DI.fm and DJ Sol’s Wild 106 mixes. My adventure started immediately. I DJed a few house parties here and there, and eventually invested in some beautiful CDJs. I didn’t know where to start, so I began to look everywhere to see what kind of events were happening in the area. I saw a request for a house party through KCPR and I jumped on that. I met two great friends: Nick and Danny that were so kind to bring me into their lives and let me get my feet wet performing for complete strangers. College parties are crazy! Everything from sketchy predicaments champagne being sprayed in the air, to avoiding having DJ equipment knocked over by girls fighting like American Gladiators.

After a few house party gigs, I really wanted to meet people who were performing at clubs and events. I found cool events like Josh Payne DJing at swanky bars, or seeing hip underground tunes from Andrew Westby, or seeing raging parties put on by the Collective Effort team. I met some great people in the Casa Street Hooligans and the new faction of HLGN pro that I could help setup gigs for. The CDJs I have are somewhat rare in the SLO area, so I was happy to help where I could. I mean really, I’m older and I can’t bring more than a few people to a show, so it felt nice to be useful.

Throughout the years I’ve been producing a weekly show (that unfortunately I’ve been horrible about keeping up with lately) that allowed me to really make some friends in SLO: Dan, Devin, John, Nate, Richard, Hi-Tem, Groovemunk, Basroak, McCraken, The Professors, all of you, thank you. One very interesting thing that came from this weekly show was that I was introduced to Josh Jacobs. Josh was starting a music website called Music You Need and even though I’m not writer (it’s pretty obvious isn’t it?) he offered me a position to write a weekly article for his website. He created a segment called “Tipsy Tree Thursdays” that I still write weekly. It’s now been a year and that means there are over 50 artists that I’ve met, incorporated into my set, and shared with the world.

About the same time, I received an opportunity to start my club career. Collective Efforts invited me to open for Tony Martinez at the now defunct Cielo Cantina. It was amazing. I’ve never had that much fun DJing before and I was immediately hooked. That started my residency at Cielo that I would hold for about 3 months before moving onto Mo|Tav with my friends Hi-Tem and McCracken.

I continued to receive amazing invites from Collective Efforts, HLGN, and Late Night Productions to participate in some amazing opportunities. Each were a unique memory that I’ll cherish forever.

Lately my adventure has moved to Sacramento, where I’m currently meeting great DJs like Louie Giovanni and Vincent Salas with his Active Playground crew. I’ve produced a few tracks and done some edits, but I’m really hoping to continue performing.

Thanks again for an amazing year. It has been one of my best in my life.